Richard Carden

If you want to start building your personal inventory of wines you have tried and need a simple way to do it, we have a couple of different tasting note templates now available in the Resources section of our site.

And now for a little history lesson about the region of the Languedoc where I currently live – the Aude. This is a lesson I learned while on a wine supply run for L’Oncle Jules (the bar my wife and I now own and I run in nearby Ginestas), and I thought it would make a great first entrée into the history of the Languedoc and Occitanie for Catharsys. And as what follows led to many of the wine laws that have now shaped the region, I think this little bit of history is a necessary base for some...

Ask most people what they see in a wine, and you will get a very simple answer: red, white or pink. But there is much more to learn just by looking in your glass, and this is why standard tasting methods always start with a visual review. HOW DO YOU LOOK AT YOUR WINE? This may sound like a silly question. Duh, you look at it. But there are important differences between looking straight into the glass from the side with a dark wall in the background, holding the glass up to the light and...